Editor's Notebook

EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

BY ART CULLEN

Just when you think: It’s Monday, I have no column, the sun won’t shine, Republicans will control the statehouse for the rest of my life and there is no God or justice in this world …

This happens:

It’s 2 p.m. You wrenched that column out of your bowels about how a Democrat will never be governor again. You tune into Pulitzer.org and they call it out on the World Wide Web:

EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

BY ART CULLEN

Democrats cannot win statewide races without at least making a showing in western Iowa. That means showing up.

We hear that Andy McGuire stopped through town for lunch with Diane Hamilton last week. McGuire is the former state party chair who formally announced her candidacy on Monday. She is the only candidate from Northwest Iowa (Spirit Lake), and her surgeon husband Dan hails from Holstein. Andy was reared in Waterloo but understands rural. She owns BV County farmland.

McGuire shows up.

EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

BY ART CULLEN

Joshua Merchant, the next president of Buena Vista University, hit all the right notes during a press conference and introductory reception last week with his wife, Carrie.

EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

BY ART CULLEN

Fred Hoiberg is a winner treading water in Chicago. He is one person who cold bring all Iowans together.

For the sake of Iowa, Fred Hoiberg needs to come home. The Mayor needs to become The Governor.

EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

BY ART CULLEN

Come now. Tourists say they will cancel their pleasure trips to Iowa because Steve King is Steve King. Can we really blame the congressman from Kiron that so few want to pamper themselves in The Tall Corn State?

The Iowa Tourism Office, which must be about as busy as the Kansas Tourism Office, reported last week that it received 60 messages from people skeptical of visiting Iowa because King thinks we need more babies — and not necessarily the kind who are born in Storm Lake in darker hues.

EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

BY ART CULLEN

Steve King was hanging in Twitterland with a Boy Named Gert over the weekend when the Kiron philosopher clued us that you can’t defend your culture using somebody else’s babies.

Gert Wilders is a Netherworld white nationalist who wants to run Holland. King is all for him. The congressman sends the regards of Orange City, I’m sure. When you think of Gert, you think of the neighbor lady Reding from St. Joe, not some fire-breathing knuckle-dragger from tulip holler.

EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

BY ART CULLEN

We found out what it’s like to be on the other side of the camera last week as a couple documentary producers spent three days in Storm Lake.

EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

BY ART CULLEN

Anyone who wants to understand Buena Vista University should take a look at the names on the buildings: Siebens, Schaller, Ballou, Edson and White. Storm Lakers all, Buena Vista graduates none. Buena Vista was founded in the Mack Law Office when it was upstairs on Lake Avenue. The college was kept alive through economic recessions and depressions, through wars big and small, by Storm Lake. By Ed Mack and Zene White and Willis Edson and Loyal Ballou.

EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

BY ART CULLEN

People not so enlightened as I have told me that if you lock three women in a room together, two will scratch out the third’s eyes. If you lock five men in a room together, three will suck all the oxygen out of the room and suffocate the other two. They will then wonder what happened to the other two when they ask either blue corpse if he would like another beer.

EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

BY ART CULLEN

Rural voters gave Republicans the keys to the car in Des Moines and Washington the last election. They took a look at what has happened — stagnant wages, 67 counties losing population every single year for the past 30, consolidating schools, foreigners in the checkout lane who can’t speak English but use food stamps.

They wanted a change. With the GOP in control, we can finally and forever get government off our backs and out of our bank account.